Only a day or two after the January 6 resolution had been passed by Congress, a sensational pamphlet was published in Philadelphia. It appeared under the innocuous title of Common Sense, but it did more to stir revolutionary fervor than anything said or written up to that time. The author was Thomas Paine, an Englishman who had come to America at the urging of Benjamin Franklin. Paine was no scholar, but he had a knack of penetrating hypocrisy and exposing the plain truth. His 25,000-word book was circulated all over America and in Europe, and it sold nearly 175,000 copies in the colonies alone. Ripping into the concept of monarchy, Paine scorned men who pretended respect for the Crown while denouncing royal edicts. "The period of debate is closed," he wrote. "Arms, as a last resort, must decide the contest." In another passage, Paine ridiculed remote rule by Britain: "There is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet: and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems."